An increasingly popular fashionable feature on sweat shirts and other exercise or casual shirts is the application of a locker patch below the shirt collar at the back of the shirt. A locker patch is a substantially semi-circular or crescent shaped piece of cloth placed in overlying relationship with the upper back panel of a shirt and sewn to either the inside or outside surface of the rear of the garment adjacent the neckline, where a clothing tag or fabric loop typically is secured. The clothing tag which usually bears the trademark of the producer of the garment is attached to the locker patch instead of directly to the back panel of the shirt. The locker patch originally was designed to reinforce the garment so that it could be hung by its tag or fabric loop from a hook, etc. without stretching or otherwise damaging the garment. Although the locker patch was originated in order to serve this simple functional purpose, today locker patches are being used as more of a feature of style and fashion than for their function as a support for hanging the garment, typically adorning more costly clothing items.
In the conventional production of garments having locker patches applied thereto, the locker patches generally are attached to the garment by a worker who manually positions the patch about the neck opening of the garment and thereafter guides the garment, with the patch aligned thereon, about a sewing path through a sewing machine. This typically requires the worker to stretch and move around the sewing machine to move and control the movement of the garment through its sewing path while continuing to operate the sewing machine. This is a physically taxing activity that requires careful and exacting attention to maintain the locker patch in its desired alignment on the garment.
In a production line operation, such movement about the sewing machine is time consuming and makes it difficult for the worker to maintain the exact positioning of the locker patch on the garment, resulting in quality control problems and an increased potential for fatigue and on-the-job injuries. Moreover, because of the complexity of the sewing operation required to attach the locker patch to the garment, any error in guiding the garment and patch through the sewing machine can result in a damaged or missewn product that must be discarded or sold as defective. The system operator therefore is required to have relatively high skill in order to produce consistently a high quality product. Further, the operator must concentrate so completely on the sewing operation that the operator generally is prohibited from performing any additional tasks during a sewing operation, such as preparing and matching additional garment parts for sewing. As a result, the manufacture of garments with locker patches sewn thereon generally has been more expensive and has required greater production time than the production of conventional garments without locker patches. Accordingly, production of such garments has been limited and the costs of labor associated with manufacturing garments with locker patches has been prohibitively high. Consequently, such garments typically are manufactured in third world countries outside the United States where labor costs are less.
Attempts have been made to develop automated equipment that overcomes some of the inherent problems and inefficiencies with manual sewing operations, such as those discussed above. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,251,555 of Rohr discloses a work piece guide that attaches to a sewing machine and automatically controls the alignment of the work piece with respect to the sewing path. Additionally, U.S. Pat. No. 5,018,462 of Brocklehurst discloses an automated edge finishing system for finishing the edges of flat textile goods such as wash cloths, towels or napkins. However, neither of these two devices is designed for automatically sewing around the edge of a locker patch to attach the locker patch to the neck portion of the back panel of a shirt without requiring the constant, full attention of the operator.
Accordingly, it can be seen that a need exists for a system for automatically attaching a locker patch to a shirt that can be operated by a relatively unskilled worker and which enables the worker to perform additional functions and operations as the system sews the locker patch to the shirt to increase garment production and reduce the cost of production.